Dr Rowan Williams' play has Stratford premiere
A dramatic new play about William Shakespeare written by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, is to have its English premiere at Stratford-upon-Avon’s Holy Trinity Church where the poet was baptised and is buried.
Set in 1581, the play Shakeshafte reconstructs a dialogue between a young Shakespeare and the Jesuit missionary Edmund Campion, who was later arrested by priest hunters, convicted of high treason and hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn.
Now Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, Dr Williams revealed the plot when guest speaker at a fund-raising dinner organised by the Friends of Shakespeare’s Church for the £70,000 restoration of the church’s 13th Century St Peter’s Chapel. Describing Shakeshafte as “a bit of imaginative writing”, Dr Williams said: “It’s not a comedy or a tragedy, it’s a drama with a bit of blood and guts to it, although not literally.”
The play is based on the idea that Shakespeare might, as a young man, have spent some time in Lancashire in one of the great houses of a Catholic family. There was some evidence, says Dr Williams, that he was there in the winter of 1581, as was Campion who would be travelling in disguise because it was then illegal to be a Catholic priest. “What I really wanted to do was not write a piece of historical detective work but to think about what a great saint and a great artist might have had to say to each other. So the core of the play is the dialogue between Shakeshafte/Shakespeare and Campion, a man of colossal courage who knows that as soon as he is captured he will be tortured and executed.
“How might Campion, a playwright himself with an understanding of acting, have influenced the young poet? What lessons might he have passed on — about theatre, about pretence, about authority, about disguise?”
Such was the interest in the play from those attending the dinner in February, that Ronnie Mulryne, Chairman of the Friends and Emeritus Professor specialising in Shakespeare and renaissance drama at Warwick University, approached Dr Williams about the possibility of performing it in Stratford.
“Dr Williams sent me the script and I discussed the idea with the Vicar, the Revd Patrick Taylor, and our drama group, Trinity Players”, Prof Mulryne said: “We were fascinated by the concept of the play and to perform it in Shakespeare’s Church and in the playwright’s 400th anniversary year, seemed absolutely right. This is, as Dr Williams says, a gutsy play that conveys a strong sense of the tensions and anxieties of William Shakespeare’s time as well as its crisis of religious belief. Powerful stuff!’
Ursula Russell who leads Trinity Players, said: “We formed the drama group in 2007 and have staged a number of successful productions in Holy Trinity Church. The Archbishop knows our work and it is a tremendous honour that he is entrusting us to be the first drama group in England to perform his play.”
In July, Dr Williams attended the Welsh premiere of the play at the Dylan Thomas Theatre in Swansea, his home town. One reviewer wrote: “Whether or not Shakeshafte was Shakespeare, this thought-provoking portrayal deserves to be staged beyond Williams’s native West Wales where it was very well received.”
When and Where: Shakeshafte will be performed at Holy Trinity Church tonight (Thursday) at 7pm and on Saturday, 2pm and 7pm - tickets available on the door.
